The Hindu : Paswan to ally with RJD, Congress

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 22, 2004

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Other States - Bihar

Paswan to ally with RJD, Congress

By Our Staff Correspondent

PATNA, FEB. 21. The Lok Janshakti Party president, Ramvilas Paswan, today announced his decision to ally with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress in Bihar and Jharkhand to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Addressing the national congress, where he was re-elected the party president, Mr. Paswan strengthened his party through a merger and an induction and staked claim to fight five of the 40 Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar.

It was for the first time that Mr. Paswan aligned himself with the RJD and named the five constituencies that his party intended to contest. He underlined the need to take all together to save the country from the poisonous fangs of the BJP. He would be joining hands with the RJD supremo, Laloo Prasad Yadav, after a gap of over seven years.

The Independent MP in the dissolved Lok Sabha, Rajesh Ranjan, alias, Pappu Yadav, merged his party formally and the Independent MLA, Suraj Bhan Singh, named in several murder cases, too joined the LJP.

While Mr. Paswan and his brother, Ram Chandra Paswan, would be contesting once again from Hajipur (SC) and Rosera (SC) constituencies respectively, Mr. Pappu Yadav was likely to shift from Purnia to Madhepura and take on the Union Food and Civil Supplies Minister, Sharad Yadav.

Mr. Paswan made it clear that Mr. Pappu Yadav would fight from Madhepura only if the RJD chief, Laloo Prasad Yadav, did not contest the seat. The LJP staked claim on the Balia seat for Suraj Bhan Singh and the Munger seat for its state unit chief, Narendra Singh.

If the grapevine is to be believed the LJP may find favour with the RJD chief on most of these five seats. Political sources maintained that the RJD chief had already sounded Pappu Yadav regarding the Madhepura seat.

The highlight of his speech was that he defended the Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, while running down the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Mr. Paswan said that it was ridiculous to raise the foreign origin issue emphasising the fact that she had not hankered for power which could have easily been grabbed after the assassination of her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991 riding on the sympathy wave, unlike Mr. Vajpayee.

Mr. Paswan regarded the BJP's claim of winning 300-plus seats as building castles in the air. While eight parties had quit the NDA, some of its other allies were fighting with their backs to the wall. He claimed that it would be impossible for the BJP and its allies to retain 33 seats in Bihar and 12 in Jharkhand. They would not cross the double-digit figure in the two States put together.

The LJP leader also pulled up the BJP for relying on English slogans. "It is India which is shining and not Bharat," he said, stressing that only two percent of the English speaking population were making hay at the cost of the 98 per cent of the toiling masses in the country.

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Paswan to ally with RJD, Congress